Will it work?

My son, Ricky, goes to a surgery consultation on the 1st of July. Poot Scoot was born missing 3 fingers on his left hand. After the complications during pregnancy and being born premature, we felt that this was nothing! After he came home from the NICU from residing there several months, he did have a surgery on his hand. Basically, the doctor made and incision and fused the skin to allow more opposability between the two exisiting digits.

Poots has done quite well in his adaptation of the missing digits. At 5 years old, it has only been in the past two years that he has noticed something is different. With that, his mother's mother found an article in People Magazine months ago introducing Ryan Fuchs and Dr. Bill Seitz. Dr. Seitz is a renowned hand surgeon that specializes in the growth of fingers. Basically, how the surgery works is this: small bones are removed from the toes, placed into the fingers. They heal. Surgery two: lengtheners are placed on the transplanted bones. They consist of screws that you turn twice daily. You are, if I'm not mistaken, slightly fracturing the bone upon each twist (4x's daily) thus allowing the bone to regrow where it's missing and lenthen. Sound PAINFUL! I don't know. Often during this process the webbing amongst the fingers can fuse. A final surgery corrects this and removes the lengtheners.

Is this the right thing for my son? I don't know. That's why we're having a consultation. Don't know if it'd be worth it. If it is, by all means we'll do all we can to make it happen. My hesitation is his hand already works and works well. He is only slightly limited. And, with those limitations he can typically make a way for it to work after a tad of concentration and determination. It does bother him that he is "different", but I think this is partly due to the observance of the obvious and being five years old. Almost six.

I ask all of you that come across this to send up a prayer. If it's meant to be, allow us to afford it financially and deal with it appropiately emotionally. If it's not for our son, that we all will know the words to comfort him and his acceptance of being different is overpowering as well as comforting.

I don't konw the expense of the surgery, but the flights alone will be tremendous.

I will keep you posted and let you all know what the doctors say after July. Thanks!